


Always Orange

by jjtaylor



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjtaylor/pseuds/jjtaylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-New Earth. Rose and the Doctor visit a very orange planet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Orange

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to femmequixotic for beta. This story was originally posted on February 19th, 2007.

Rose finds that she doesn't have a lot to say after they watch Cassandra watch herself die. Every time she touches her body, smoothing down the hem of her shirt, brushing her hair away from her face, every time she thinks she's finally thinking about nothing, she remembers Cassandra pushing her, squashing her down inside her own head, rifling through her thoughts.

She spends a lot of time listening to the TARDIS engines as they cruise through space and time going nowhere. She wants to ask the Doctor if he's ever had that happen before, if he's quiet because he hasn't or if he's quiet because he has. She doesn't think either answer will help her explain how she feels about it, but what she feels is that there's a lot more space inside of herself than she thought there was before, and that she doesn't fit right into her own body anymore, like it's a sweater that's gotten stretched out.

She wonders if it's both of them having had someone else's thoughts inside their own that makes the Doctor say, "Let's go somewhere peaceful."

"With you peaceful means great battles and big trouble, doesn't it?"

"I know just the place," he says, and then he's practically skipping around the console, cranking knobs and tapping at buttons. "Peaceful, peaceful, if anywhere is peaceful, this is it. There we go." The engines stop, and he grins at Rose.

Rose runs for the door, because peaceful sounds wonderful right about now. "All right, let's see what you think is so impressive."

Just outside the TARDIS, a chilly breeze catches her scarf. Everywhere is orange. There are rows of trees, mountains of them, growing up high into the sky, a forest like she's never seen, orange peel and rust and amber, and she can see each individual leaf waving gently on the breeze, like it's just about to let go. There are leaves covering the ground, too, the barest hint of grass underneath. The grass, even, is pale orange, and the tree bark a distinctly orangish brown. The Doctor appears at her shoulder.

"Go on," he says. She steps out, and then kicks the leaves and closes her eyes and breathes deep.

"It's autumn," she says.

"The trees are always like this." The Doctor has his hands in his trouser pockets, his coat fanning out behind him like a tail. He looks to Rose entirely boyish, like he's about to tug her ponytail and then stick his tongue out at her and run off.

"It's always autumn?" As far as things she's seen, year-round autumn doesn't seem that strange.

"They're always orange," the Doctor declares and tries to look grand.

Rose giggles, tilts her head back and looks everywhere. This is what she loves about traveling. A planet that's always orange.

The Doctor begins his lecture, "It's 3089 and no one will find this plane for another 10,000 years, and then only by accident, and then they're a race who hates orange, so they just pick up and get on their way and it just so happens that -"

"You're joking.' Rose interrupts him.

"I'm not. Some races honestly hate orange. Think it's the worst thing. No orange juice, no pumpkins, no calendulas...."

"So we're not here to save the planet from deforestation, or to put a stop to a vicious leaf-eating insect or something."

"I thought you'd like it," he says, shrugging and toeing a fallen leaf.

That's something her old Doctor, her first Doctor, would never have said. Not like that, not with the slightest pout and the sparkle in his eyes. Every time she remembers that she's known two Doctors, but not really, she gets frightened all over again. It's too much, so many layers of people inside of people. One Doctor inside the other is too much like Cassandra inside the both of them.

He's looking at her expectantly now, waiting for her, and so she says, "I do like it," because of course she does, he always did know exactly what she liked. She kicks the leaves and spins around, and then links the Doctor's arm in hers. "Go on, then, make a leaf pile and I'll jump in it."

Rose lies in the leaves for a while, looking up at the sky that looks perpetually like sunset, golden and warm. She'll have leaves in her hair later and she doesn't care. Alien leaves, always orange. She props herself up on her elbows.

The Doctor is looking at the horizon with his arm twisted behind his back, his other arm bent so his elbow's high in the air.

"Got an itch?" Rose calls out, and the Doctor bends to the side, trying to get his hand lower.

He stops and then grins at her. "You've got leaves in your hair."

She closes her eyes and laughs, and then pulls herself up.

"What are you doing," she asks, "with your arms all twisted? Looks like you're trying to reach something. You sure it's not an itch. Can I help?"

"It isn't an itch, but you can help. Come here."

He twists his arms again, and then unbends and takes off his overcoat, tossing it into a pile of leaves, and then he bends his arms again. "Help me bend my elbow more. Just press it down."

Rose laughs. "Why?"

"I'm trying to remember."

"Well, why don't you stop until you figure it out?"

He switches his arms and tries again. "I'm trying to find a certain memory. It's back here somewhere."

"In your back? You've got to be joking."

"Some of my memories are harder to reach than others. If only my arms were longer."

"So, what, you're like a piano. Just press the right spot and a memory plays?

"That's me, a piano!" he says. "Come here, put your hand right here." He bobs his elbow up and down.

This is dangerous, this invitation to touch him. Rose places her hand in the middle of his back, just where his arms can't reach. "There, good, right there. Now press hard."

She does, and the Doctor drops his arms to his sides. "Yes, right there. Keep your hand there. Oh, there it is," he says, like he's just seen something with his eyes closed. When Rose peers around to look at his face, his expression is pleased, his mouth in a slack smile, his eyebrows arched up. She looks away quickly, staring at the ground.

"What were you trying to remember?" she asks softly. She is trying very hard not to think about where her hands are, and how he's leaning into her touch.

"The first time I saw foliage in America. Vermont. 1790. Nice place. Good maple syrup."

"And that memory was right here?" Rose presses again.

"Yes," he says, sighing, and he tips his head back a little. Rose stares at his shirt collar, definitely not looking at the newly exposed skin of his neck.

"What about here," she says, moving her hand up a bit, so it's in the middle of his shoulder blades. "What memory is here?" Her fingers knead the muscles slightly.

"Oh, that's how to fix the TARDIS when it gets that rattle right underneath the console."

"That's good," she says, laughing, and he laughs, too. "I should be taking notes. What's here?" She splays her fingers lower, just at the curve of his spine.

"Oh," he gaps, and she feels his shoulders sag. His head drops. "Oh, that's a sad, sad memory."

Rose immediately pulls her hand away. "Sorry."

He turns so he's facing her and rests his arms on her shoulders. "Oh, don't you be sad, too, Rose. I've lots of memories. Some of them are sad. Here," he says, grabbing her hands and wrapping them around his waist. "Press here, both hands." He settles her hands just above his hips.

There is something distinctly fox-like about him, Cassandra was right. She can see all the freckles across his cheeks this close. Although, when she thinks about it, they've been this close – even closer – before, when they were hiding around a corner or squished into a cupboard but none of those times had she ever really noticed how the muscles of his back felt under her hands.

Her feet are on either side of his, her chin on his shoulder and when she presses her fingers just under his ribs, the Doctor sighs deeply. "What is it?" she asks, and feels the sigh in his chest against hers.

"The best bowl of onion stew I ever had."

"Oh, that sounds delicious. That's a good spot."

"Mmm," he says, "you should see what happens if you press your tongue there."

Rose feels her whole face flush. He says, "Move up, just a bit. And move your thumb. There." He slides his palms down her arms. "Oh, I love that one."

"What is it?"

His eyes are closed and he breathes in deeply.

"What?" she asks again.

He meets her eyes and grins. "When you and I met."

Rose can't help but smile in return. "That's in your memory spine?"

"If you play the right note."

She laughs, nervously again, and bounces on her heels. "So, is this a Time Lord thing, or does everyone keep their memories in their spines and I just never knew?"

"Let's see!" he says with glee, and slides his arms around her, tugging her close, running his fingers up and down her spine. Her breath catches, her mouth going dry. "Now close your eyes," he says, "and just concentrate on the spot I'm touching."

Rose closes her eyes, her whole body tingling, and concentrates on the Doctor's fingers, which are settling in a row down her back. She feels her heart pick up, remembers so very clearly Cassandra's – her own - lips on his. She says, "I don't feel anything." It's a lie. She feels too much, her body against his, his hands caressing her and she knows he's just testing a theory but it feels like another kind of exploration.

"Probably your shirt," he says, and then slides his hands under it and across the expanse of her back without hesitation, like he's done this with her a hundred times before. She arches into him at the shock of his touch.

"Try again," he says, and he seems to be looking over her head, up at the sky, his fingers dancing all over.

And then suddenly she feels it. A memory that pulls her out of the complete strangeness of the Doctor's hand up her shirt and him acting like it's nothing at all, certainly nothing new. She and her Mum, shopping for curtains to decorate her room for her thirteenth birthday. "That's amazing," she says. "It's like I'm there."

"What about here?" The Doctor presses just a tiny bit lower, his index fingers just at the waist of her jeans.

"Oh." She feels light, blindingly bright light and an incredible headache. She sees the letters written everywhere, across her eyes. "Oh," she says again, confusion and panic gripping her, and she's traveling away, everywhere across time and space all at once. "Bad Wolf," she gasps out, and the Doctor tugs her close.

"Shh, shh." He rubs circles over her shoulders and neck, chasing the memory away with a hundred others up and down her spine, faster than she can tell what they are until finally, she relaxes.

The Doctor hugs her tightly for a moment, and then says, "All right?" And then quickly, "My turn again. Untuck my shirt, there we go, I forgot how much better it works against skin."

She doesn't think about what that could mean, either. She's barely able to think at all with all these things she's not supposed to be thinking about. Rose tugs his shirt away from his trousers anyway, hesitates for a moment, and then slips both hands under his shirt.

"Chilly fingers," he says. "They're nice."

She's entirely distracted by the feel of his skin, and then he starts stroking her back, up and down, up and down and she follows him, doing the same. He is incredibly warm in the cool air, and, his hair against her check, she feels entirely possessive. Cassandra should never have touched him, not for a moment.

"Up a little," he whispers. "Oh, right there. Oh, that was a good day."

"What," Rose whispers back, and her voice catches. The Doctor's fingers have slipped under her bra strap as though it weren't even there, like he's trying to cover every single inch of skin. She thinks again of what he'd said about the onion stew; she thinks about his tongue pressing where his fingers are now.

"A very good day. You and me and Jack, and the waterfall that came out of nowhere. Remember, Jack wanted to surf down it and you were worried about not having a swim suit."

"Yes, and Jack was threatening to take the table top and make it a surfboard," Rose laughs, remembering. Remembering as clearly as though she were there again, with Jack and the Doctor at her side. "Wait," Rose says. "I can feel it, too." The Doctor's fingers stop, and then press deeper.

"Can you?" he says, and the curiosity in his voice sends a shiver through her with its sheer possibility. "That's brilliant. Hold on, hold on, put your hands up here, up, up," he demands quickly, and he puts his hands on her shoulders where he wants her to put hers.

"Is that where..."

"Yes!" he exclaims. "Now, again, here." He slides his fingers under her hair, and then he presses every single finger together at the same time. "And here!" Rose does the same, her fingertips are poking out just at the edge of his collar, her palms at the base of his neck until they are sharing memory after memory.

Suddenly, her eyes fall shut with the feeling coursing through her, coming up from the ground, up through the Doctor's fingers, through every point they're touching like a circuit, looping over and over. She whispers, "God, what is that?"

Their breathing is fast and perfectly in time. Everything is warm, orange all around, like a blanket over both of their shoulders, like a ray of sun directly on them.

"That, Rose," he says softly, "is right now. That is this very moment."

"It is, isn't it?" she says dazedly, and looks into the Doctor's shining eyes. She sees everything she remembers there, she sees him, and she isn't worried any longer about anyone getting in between them, even someone inside her head or his.

"There's no chance of forgetting now," he says, his voice even softer.

"No, there isn't," she agrees. His face is inches from hers and leaning closer. "No chance at all."


End file.
